


babysitting

by toqueso



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toqueso/pseuds/toqueso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil's old kids come to check up on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	babysitting

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: all the characters in this work of fiction belong to Marvel.

Phil Coulson’s Tuesday morning starts like this: he’s just finished tugging his suit jacket into place, 5 AM sharp, when his cell chirps at him. The caller ID says “Stark,” and for one, brief, glorious moment Phil considers ignoring it.

Then he considers what happened the last time he ignored one of Stark’s calls.

Phil reluctantly takes it. “Stark,” he says, turning it more into a statement than a question.

“BOO, YOU WHORE,” comes blaring out of the tinny speaker into Phil’s ear. He immediately jabs “end call,” and sets the phone down, hard, on the nightstand. He’s going to kill Stark in some yet-unimagined, gory way. Maybe he’ll ask Fitzsimmons for one of their DWARVES and…outfit it a little. A tasing function would be nice.

The phone rings again. Phil doesn’t have to check it to know it’s Stark.

“Stark.”

“I see you’ve gotten yourself a new team,” and Stark sounds manic, has he been sleeping lately? (not that’s it’s any of Phil’s business) “Weren’t we good enough for you? I see you swapped Brucie and me out for Twiddledee and Twiddledum, Natasha for…another Natasha, and instead of the Capsicle himself you got yourself some guy with a stick so far up his ass it’s about to puncture his—“

“Thank you for your assessment, Stark.” Phil switches him to speaker and rifles through his tie collection. Should he pick dark grey with light grey pinstripes, or light grey with dark grey pinstripes? “Unfortunately, I don’t have time right now for your latent self-esteem issues.”

There is silence on the other end of the line for a beat, in which Phil can hear one of Stark’s robots whirring unhelpfully. “ _Latent_ self-esteem issues?” Stark eventually squawks. “There’s nothing _latent_ about them; I’m out and proud, baby. All about my daddy issues, and the fact that my mother never loved me, oh sure—“

“I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. Please send my regards to Miss Potts.” With that, Phil finally selects the best tie for the day—medium grey with greyish pinstripes—and presses “end call” again before proceeding to block Stark from his list of accepted numbers, for the twenty-seventh time. Once Skye starts relaxing a bit, maybe he can ask her to help rig his phone so Stark doesn’t end up getting his number every time he changes it.

It seems like the end of the madness from Stark’s end, at any rate.

* * *

 

Phil is in fact, wrong.

A few days later, Phil steps into Fitzsimmons’ lab (demarcated in the middle by strangely beeping apparatuses and the faint smell of roasted flesh) and, to his horror, sees Tony Stark, accompanied by Bruce Banner, running amok with “Twiddledee and Twiddledum.” He can already see wrenches strewn on the floor, with mysterious streaks of black liquid (oil? Phil hopes, desperately, so) here and there. And is that…a Chitauri arm in the sink? This is at least a Code Orange-level potential threat. Phil coughs delicately, trying to get their attention. He had momentarily forgotten, in the blissful absence of Stark’s presence, that being a SHIELD agent was ninety-five percent babysitting and five percent paperwork.

Jenna Simmons is the first to notice his presence. “Sir! Look who came by!” She points at the visiting duo, her voice cracking a bit. “That’s Tony Stark…and _Bruce Banner!_ ” There are stars in her eyes. Phil looks at Leo Fitz and sees similar adoration in his eyes; he mentally revises the situation to a Code Red. Ripping children apart after they’ve grown attached is so much messier.

At least Banner looks a little shy and pleasantly embarrassed by the attention. Stark just preens. “Hey, Agent—Phil! How’s it going, Phil?” Stark chirps, bouncing over. “Look who I brought! Aren’t you glad we came to say hi?” He looks like he’s been running on pure caffeine for several days.

Banner flushes. Well, pink is better than green, Phil supposes. He tries to prevent the situation from escalating; if Fitzsimmons get any closer to Stark and Banner he’s going to have to manually eject Stark and Banner in order to get any work done around here. “Stark. We are in a CXD-23 Airborne Mobile Command Station over 40,000 feet in the air. _How did you get on our bus_?”

“I bet you would love to know, wouldn’t you. You SHIELD agents, always getting your grimy hands all over my precious tech.” Stark seems to take brief notice of Fitz, looking dejected at his hero’s casual dismissal of his line of work. “Except for these two over here. I want them. Can I have them? I’ll play nice, they’ll be like ninety point two three percent functional when I return them—“

“Tony, no.” Banner interjects softly, and Stark ceases, looking disappointed before recovering. “Oh Brucie, don’t worry, you’re always number one in my heart, never doubt that—except for that one time with the antimatter generator, then you kind of went down to number fifteen—“

Phil quickly pinches the skin of his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “Stark, get out or I will toss you out of the emergency exit.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Stark says. Behind him, Bruce gulps.

Phil raises one eyebrow. He subtly leans to the side, shifting so that Stark can’t see him pick up the Night-Night gun from a counter. This is going to be entertaining.

(To Phil’s credit, he does provide them both with parachutes when he does throw them out, although Stark might have a hell of a time waking Banner up mid-descent with all the sedative in his system.)

* * *

 

The next Thursday, when the bus is grounded for refueling, Phil is rummaging through the vending machine in the agents’ lounge when he hears the squeak of a leather boot against tile. Phil tenses, and quickly takes his bag of trail mix from the slot and stands up, turning around.

Of course. He is faced with the full stare of four people: this time, Stark has brought along Clint and Natasha in addition to Banner. “Hello,” Phil greets them mildly, beginning to open his packet.

Natasha stares at him impassively, her only tell of impatience another squeak of her boot against the floor. Clint isn’t so controlled and lets out an irritated sigh. “I thought you guys were _never_ going to land! Tasha and I, we’ve been waiting for _weeks_."

“Wait, what?” Stark does a double-take. “No ‘wow, he’s alive,’ or ‘you look good for a dead guy’? This comes as _no surprise_ to you?”

“Your clearance level wasn’t high enough to know about this,” Natasha states calmly.

“What—that’s bullshit!” Stark looks pretty furious. “You mean I haven’t fully hacked SHIELD’s mainframe? Oh, _please_.” Stark turns to leave before turning back around, poking Phil’s chest. Phil contemplates burying Stark alive in paperwork. “And _you_. I thought we had something going. You really hurt my feelings, chucking me out of your stupid aircraft—it really is stupid, by the way, you should let me build you a new one—and that parachute was _horrible_ , I could’ve designed a better one in my sleep, really, who have you been contracting to design your tech, it’s just subpar—“

“You might be in danger of losing that finger, Tony,” Banner mentions, and Stark quickly withdraws, still mulish. “Don’t do that again,” Stark warns, face suddenly serious and somber—and isn’t that all wrong, the fact that he, Phil Coulson, has caused Tony Stark to look this way? “Don’t.”

Phil inclines his head, the words sticking in his throat. They are beyond what apologies can mend.

Banner looks between the three SHIELD agents, all tense. “We’ll leave you all to…sort things out,” Banner says. “But Tony is right, Agent—ah, Phil. Please. Don’t do this again.” Banner holds Phil’s gaze for a moment, in which Phil thinks he can see flashes of green in the other’s irises—before it is gone, and Banner lowers his eyes. He latches onto Stark’s wrist and tows him out, the two of them briskly walking out the lounge entryway.

Once they’re safely out the door, Clint’s posture relaxes before stiffening again. “I had to find out you were alive from a briefing. _A briefing_.” His voice is all accusations.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says, because what else can he do?

“And I had to find out by going through Fury’s files,” Natasha volunteers, voice icier than usual.

“What, he let you?” Clint asks, bewildered.

Natasha shoots him the you-are-an-idiot look. “Of course not.”

Phil lets a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth before trying to smother it, but Clint (inevitably) notices it. “Hey, we’re glad you’re alive,” Clint says, unfreezing a bit. And them, more warmly: “I see you’ve got a new team of puppies to chaperone.”

That pulls another exasperated smile out of Phil, thinking of his team. “They’ll shape up,” Phil acknowledges.

“You won’t be coming back to the Avengers Initiative,” Natasha concludes.

“No,” Phil shakes his head, and looks at the two of them. Not having these two by his side is almost like being unarmed, he thinks—sometimes the ache is almost palpable. But—“You two will be fine.”

Clint and Natasha shuffle a bit together, almost imperceptibly—as if they are trying to huddle from the cold. “Sitwell’s our handler now,” Clint grumbles.

“Clint’s been recycling his pranks,” Natasha reports, and Clint tries to punch her in the arm—only to get arm nearly twisted out of its socket for his efforts. “Ow! Tasha!” Natasha’s face is bland as usual, except for the way her eyes crinkle a bit at the sides.

“Don’t get lazy when you think I’m not looking, Barton,” Phil says.

“I would never, sir.”

Natasha checks her watch. “We have to go, unless you want Stark bitching about being late to his meeting.”

“He’s _always_ late to his meetings. What’s an extra three hours or so?” Clint complains.

“I’m not in the mood to crack his jaw,” Natasha explains. She nods briskly at Phil. “We’ll have to get you a welcome-back present.”

“It’s not really necessary—“ Phil tries to stop her.

“That’s a great idea!” Clint, of course, has a shit-eating grin on his face. “I’ve got just the thing, too.” He practically rushes out.

Natasha side-eyes Phil. “I would check your mail for any neurotoxins in the next few weeks,” she advises, her voice wavering in a way that completely fails to conceal her amusement, and walks out. Phil listens to her light footsteps glide against the hallway floor until they fade away completely.

The silence rings around Phil, suddenly, and he clenches the packet of trail mix in his hand, until now forgotten. He exhales noisily, adjusting his tie absent-mindedly. Oh well. He’ll get there, with his current team.

He opens the package and proceeds to throw away all the almonds.

* * *

 

Phil’s “present” comes on Saturday: they’re cruising at a comfortable altitude when something drops out of the sky and thwacks onto their left wing. The entire plane lists to the side as Skye lets out a brief shriek, falling out of her chair, and Ward reaches for his sidearm. Phil sighs, relaxing in one of the lounge’s armchairs, and hears the glass shattering in Fitzsimmons’ lab. 

“Melinda, you all right?” Phil calls out.

The resulting silence is a pointed “yes.” Phil stands up, making sure that Skye isn’t too bruised, and approaches the nearest window. And as he does, Thor’s face pops up in the window (Skye lets out another aborted scream), his left hand waving cheerily.

Phil sighs, and looks at Ward, who seems speechless. “Open the emergency exit door, please,” Phil commands calmly.

Ward looks a bit numb, but does as Phil says and Thor comes tearing through, depositing a black bag on the floor. “Son of Coul!” Thor greets cheerily. “I am most pleased to see your return from the inky grasp of death!” He seems to register the presence of other people and advances on Ward, eyes gleaming. “And ho, friends! Who are your comrades, Son of Coul?” Ward looks like he is in imminent danger of being bear-hugged by Thor, and Phil makes a mental note to check Ward over later for any internal organ bruising or broken bones.

Skye makes a horrified little gasp. “Is that…a body bag?” she chokes out, pointing on the bag Thor left.

The offending item in question rustles a bit and makes a muffled noise. Skye scoots closer to Phil. She looks like she is about to clutch his leg.

Thor turns his attention away from strangulating Ward through friendship and exclaims, “Ah yes! Forgive me, good Captain!” Thor unzips the bag and Captain America pops out, a tag attached to his button-down shirt. Phil doesn’t need to be able to read the tag in order to know that it’s signed from Clint.

Captain America ( _Captain America_ , Phil thinks dumbly) beams up at Phil. “Agent Coulson! I’m glad to see the reports of your death were greatly exaggerated.”

“Ah—yes,” Phil hears himself mention. Should he extend a hand to help the man up? No, the Captain seems to be doing just fine on his own, unentangling himself from the body bag.

“Oh, wow,” Skye says, standing up. “Captain _America_?”

“The same, ma’am,” Rogers nods politely to her, before turning to Phil again. “Clint said that Thor and I were the only ones who haven’t visited yet. Looks like you got yourself a nice ride.”

“In addition to new comrades,” Thor interjects, gesturing to Ward—who looks like he’s still struggling to breathe on the floor. Phil feels vaguely concerned, but Ward will recover. Probably.

“I’m glad, you know, to see you’re alive,” Rogers says, rubbing the back of his neck. “When you died…well. It gave us a real jump to get together and fight, but it’s better this way—“ he cuts himself off decisively, flushes, and pulls out a stack of cards from the back pocket of his khakis. “Anyways. Stark and I scrounged these up.” He extends his arm.

Ah, yes. His entire collection of Captain America trading cards, each signed and unsplattered with that fake blood R&D had cooked up from god knows where. “Thank you, Captain,” Phil says, smiling a bit, and tries not to run off to squirrel them away in a glass case where Fury can never, ever get his hands on them again.

“You’re welcome,” and Rogers’ smile is only a bit forced.

“Can I ask…” Skye says, interrupting, “I mean like, not trying to offend you or anything, but why did you come in a body bag?”

“They are most efficient for transportation, Lady Agent,” Thor explains. “Unfortunately, I am not like the Man of Iron—and thus I cannot bear our good Captain on my back.”

“Wow, you—you piggyback on Iron Man?” Skye looks at Rogers, smiling a bit.

“Uh.” There’s an awkward silence, punctuated only by Ward’s wheezing.

“Captain, perhaps we should return to the Tower. The Lady Natasha informed me that tonight is the night of pizza and movies,” Thor informs Rogers gravely.

“Right, right—lemme just—“ Rogers sits down and squirms back into the body bag. “Alright, let’s go.” Thor zips it up and heaves the bag up with one hand. Phil hears a faint protest from the body bag.

“It was most pleasing to see you again, Son of Coul,” Thor says, and walks over to the emergency door. Before Phil can stop him, he rips the door right off its hinges and jumps out.

Skye scrabbles to the emergency flotation devices, her movement impeded by the vacuum created by the hole Thor had left. She deploys the raft and slouches against Ward, patting him absent-mindedly as he continues to regain his breath. “You hung out with the Avengers and you still chose us?” Skye asks Phil, light-heartedly.

Phil looks at her, and hears only “Are you going to leave?” So: “There wasn’t even any competition,” he says, and is rewarded with a genuine smile. 

* * *

“Let me get this straight,” Fury rumbles over the phone. “Not just Barton and Romanoff, but _all_ of the Avengers know about your continued existence?”

“Yes sir,” Phil says, cell in-between his ear and his shoulder as he carefully places the cards in their each, bulletproof glass case.

He hears a gusty, crackly sigh. “God damn Stark,” Fury mutters. “Fine. Make sure this doesn’t spread any further.”

“Yes sir,” Phil says neutrally, and ends the call.

Oh well. There are fates worse than having to babysit two families at once, even if that _is_ Stark’s suit Phil sees flying towards their bus.


End file.
